Little Miss’s Alan Arkin & Greg Kinnear: A Father-Son Conversation

Arkin: You played the father, right?
Kinnear: We hadn't met before the film. But of course, I, like everybody else - not only in the movie but in the acting community, as it were - was an enormous fan.....

Arkin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kinnear: And I hadn't been at Second City [the pioneering improvisational group of which Arkin is a co-founder] like Steve had been. Steve Carell was like a stalker with you.

Arkin: But that was before 40 Year Old Virgin; now he doesn't return my calls.

[laughter]

Kinnear: Long, hot days sitting in a combi bus with no air conditioning... Whatever discomfort there was, fed into what we were doing. [Laughs] It could have been a much more miserable experience.

Arkin: The food was terrific, we were treated wonderfully; it was like working under the best of circumstances in every way. There was a major theme in the film that I think everyone reacts to: The film ends up being about the fact that, no matter how bad things are in the surface, when push comes to shove there's a sense of unity.

Arkin: It was really amazing. We were in the bus, locked together for hours and hours, and she was just one of the group; she didn't ask for any special attention. She was just listening to her music, playing games.....

Kinnear: Every once in a while you'd look over, and she'd be playing with a yo-yo and eating a Twinkie, and you'd go, "Oh my god, she's nine!" You'd forget, you really would. She was just one of the gang, and her performance was so startling because there's no artifice, no mechanics. The best acting class you'll ever have is to just study Abigail in that movie; it's seamless.

Arkin: It's a crazy profession. You can work in a profession for 50 years and be next to Abigail, and Abigail is better than you are.

[laughter]

Kinnear: That's right.

Arkin: What's the point?

[both laughing]

Kinnear: It always ends like this!

Arkin: [The morning of the scene in the hotel room where Abigail cries], she came in, she wouldn't talk to me. I said, "What the hell's the matter with her? Is she upset with me or something?" She was preparing... I would ask her mother to ask if she wanted to work [it through] with me, and Abigail would say, "No, I have an idea. I know what I'm doing."

Kinnear: Really?

Arkin: Yeah. I don't remember the directors ever giving her direction. Do you?

Kinnear: Not a lot.

Arkin: She did the first take and then they said, "That was wonderful Can you do it again and not cry quite as much this time?" And she did; she cut it down by 20 to 25 percent.

Kinnear: The first time I saw the movie - and having a daughter - it just touched me more than anything in the movie. You see movies with adults and kids sequences through history - I've never seen that kind of moment happen between an adult and a child film before. It's so touching, so truthful.

Arkin: Another thing I never anticipated was how pornographic the other [beauty pageant] kids' dances were, and how incredibly pure and beautiful and innocent [Abigail] doing the striptease was; it makes me cry. And there's an entire movie in Greg's graded reactions to what he was seeing. I usually hate the reaction shots because they tell me more than I want to know, but his were wonderful, and funny as hell.

Kinnear: ...I'm not sure I get any credit for some of those reaction shots - they were genuine looks of uncertainty.

Kinnear: Do you ski?

Arkin: I did once, and it was great. I could do it. There are only two sports I could do immediately - that's skiing and waterskiing. I got up and just kept going for 20 miles; I just knew what the focus was.

Kinnear: Oh, you should have snow-skied with Steve [Carell] and me at Sundance.

Arkin: I loved it so much that I said, "I'm never going to do this again." Because I could see an obsession; I could feel in the back of my head an obsession ready to break right through. I saw half my life going into tickets and buying boots and the right jacket, and I said, "No, thanks." The actual screening [at Sundance] is an event I'll remember forever, but the rest of it..... It will be the last time unless they fly me in and fly me out.

Kinnear: I have to say that Sundance, although there are some work obligations to that equation, I do like the event. It can be a little overwhelming, but I think this movie is very lucky. Who knows what would have happened without that festival screening that got everyone talking about the film in January of 2006. I'd seen so many incredible little films that never found the footing to find a larger audience. You do a movie you're happy with, and proud of, and you want an audience to find it.

Arkin: I like different ones for different reasons. Mostly I like the films on which there was a cohesive experience - I'm really big on community. The Russians Are Coming [the Russians Are Coming] very much so for that reason. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter because there was another series of tests: We did that with a cast of black and white actors in the '60s, in Selma, Alabama, six months after the famous civil rights march. And we were scared because we vowed that we weren't going to split up, that we were going to stay in the same place come what may. But they were still shell-shocked by what had happened and bent over backwards to make us feel welcome and comfortable; there was not one incident. It was a miracle. And The In-Laws I remember with great affection because it was the first time in my life that I allowed myself to have a good time and not feel weighted down by responsibility and fear.

Kinnear: How'd you do that? No button to hit, no orb to rub?

Arkin: If you really want to know, it was that, starting at the age of 30, my interior life became an obsession with me. It became so exciting to me - the idea of what was going on in there and the fact there was a human being... Until then I thought I was an acting machine and that between acting jobs you could just hang me in the closet. But I found out through analysis, and other things that I pursued after that, that there's an extraordinary adventure to be taken with your consciousness. The In-Laws was sort of the turning point when I realized I had a right to have a good time in my life.

Kinnear: It's weird for me, because I wasn't an actor; I didn't come from the theater. I was a talk show host before I became an actor, which was an odd place.

Arkin: Yeah, but you studied acting?

Kinnear: Yeah, I'd studied acting and drama and I'd always been interested in it and thought maybe it would be a career option at some point, but I got on another path. I got this amazing break with Sydney [Pollack] in Sabrina, but still it was an odd and strange move to go from that world to acting, and I never felt entirely comfortable doing it or accepted doing it, and it took a while to finally come to peace with it and I think I have. We've had two daughters in the last three years, and that's changed the game entirely - that, more than anything else in my life - and I'm going through my own stuff, I guess...

Arkin: You don't have to guess, you are going through your own stuff.

Kinnear: I am going through my own stuff. Yes, let me be clear on this. Only I can go through my own stuff.

Arkin: There's an Iranian director I'd do anything to work for - [Majid] Majidi: The Children of Heaven, The Color of Paradise, and Baran. To me, he's the best living director. Color of Paradise had me sobbing within the first four minutes of the film. I'd never experienced that in my life. Sobbing. It was a simple scene - three people in the scene, very little dialogue - and I was just blown away, wiped out.

Kinnear: Have you met him?

Arkin: No.

Kinnear: You're in the position now where you could meet him.

Arkin: Yeah, I should write to him. Then I had a dream that I wanted to work with Sidney Lumet, and I got to work with him for two years. Which was everything I ever hoped it would be. He's a real master.

Arkin: Of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be in the business. I'm not just in it to make a fast buck.....

Kinnear: You're not?

Arkin: Well, that too. But I'm doing this because, over the years, I got fired up either by performances or movies I saw; I've been changed dramatically. Tomorrow, the World! (about the Nazi kid growing up in the United States who has to be rehabilitated by the rest of his family) - that blew me away; I felt like it changed my life. The films of Paul Muni where he played a series of historical performances - that became my history school. I remember seeing parts of Spartacus that became part of my life. Gandhi, Kundun were also incredibly inspiring and, I felt, changed me significantly...

Kinnear: Jaws kept me out of the ocean for years... What about Lumet's 12 Angry Men? I saw it recently, and just the question of where the truth lies, what the perception is of truth... I still think about that.

Arkin: You know, one I feel like that about is "Battlestar Galactica," the new one. Have you seen it? It's brilliant. It's the most interesting show on television.

Kinnear: I can't speak for society... [laughs] which is the title of my autobiography, by the way.

Arkin: "I can't speak for society"? Mine is, "I shit you not."

Kinnear: Well, they're very similar... But I can tell you there are films that have affected me and had a real affect on the way I think about things and the way I feel about things... So I have to believe that, communally, that happens in the theatre. I just saw Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. I saw it on a plane and I was riveted by it. Actually, I thought it was an amazing assessment of what's happening right now in the world. It kind of re-engaged my thinking on a lot of those issues.

Arkin: Yeah, I expected to be very depressed by it, but I wasn't... But what's the opposition to the fact that there are thousands of species of animals dying everyday?

Kinnear: Evolution....

Arkin: That's evolution?

Kinnear: Hey, don't get me to be the spokesman for the other side, alright.

Kinnear: Yeah, it helped a great deal. It came at a time when I had an inauspicious opening couple of movies, and that was a great opportunity to work not only with Jim Brooks (who was sort of a film idol of mine before I ever did a movie) but, obviously, Jack [Nicholson]. And that was a script, similarly to Little Miss Sunshine, in that you read it and just thought, "There's something beautiful here, something great here. Wouldn't it be great if this got made into a movie?" and of course they were [making it]. But then to have the movie recognized, and to get some attention, and have people that you know who are seasoned actors, people who've done this all their lives, extending an olive branch at that time, was really incredible for me.

Arkin: I don't remember...

Kinnear: [laughs] Was it terrible?

Arkin: Not terrible. I think it petrified me, I think, but I don't remember. I'm 72, I have a right not to remember anything.

Kinnear: Yeah, it's true, there is a fear thing with it, too. It's a little like, "Whoooa."